Color printing has become more popular in recent years due in part to the increased availability of inexpensive color printers. Color documents can be created, for example, with many commercially available programs such as word processing applications (e.g., Microsoft Word™), drawing applications (e.g., Microsoft Paint™), and so forth.
Although providing acceptable results for relatively casual printing, undesired results can occur where such applications are used to print color documents with high precision. For example, where a document is to include a company logo that incorporates a trademarked shade of color, the printed document may not represent the color with exactitude, even where the user selected the color with specificity, for example by specifying a specific named color (e.g., Pantone™ color). One potential reason for this phenomenon is that one or more translations occur between the application and the printing device. For instance, one such translation occurs between the application and the operating system in describing the colors contained in the document. Another translation can occur between the operating system, for instance a graphical device interface (GDI) of the operating system, and the printing device driver. Because of these translations, there is potential for inaccurately representing one or more colors the user selected. This is particularly true where the color is a precise, predefined color.
Although there are software applications available that communicate colors with precision to printing devices, these applications tend to be expensive and difficult to learn. Accordingly, it can be appreciated that it would be desirable to have a system and method which allows the user to adjust colors prior to printing so that the exact desired colors will appear in the printed document.